Phil Luciano: Freed man gives thanks for Innocence Project

Wednesday

Nov 26, 2008 at 12:01 AMNov 26, 2008 at 9:20 PM

On Thanksgiving, Bill Dillon will give thanks to God and Melissa Montle. Without both, the Florida man says he'd be spending the holiday behind bars for a murder he did not commit. He cites divine aid for helping him survive nearly three decades behind bars. And he credits his freedom to Montle, a Peoria native and Bradley University grad now working for a legal-aid group in Florida.

Phil Luciano

Tomorrow, Bill Dillon will give thanks to God and Melissa Montle.

Without both, the Florida man says he'd be spending the holiday behind bars for a murder he did not commit. He cites divine aid for helping him survive nearly three decades behind bars. And he credits his freedom to Montle, a Peoria native and Bradley University grad now working for a legal-aid group in Florida.

Because of the sensational case - rife with allegations of fraud, corruption and sexual scandal - Montle has been popping up in newspapers and on news shows nationally lately. Remarkably, it's the first case she has handled for the not-for-profit Innocence Project of Florida.

"I feel so lucky to be part of it," she says.

After graduating from Notre Dame High School and Bradley, Montle went to law school at Tulane University, in New Orleans. There, she assisted the Innocence Project of New Orleans, an affiliation of the Innocence Project based in New York and started in 1992 by high-profile defense attorneys Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld. The group takes on cases in which DNA testing can clear wrongfully convicted defendants.

In New Orleans, Montle had planned to become a prosecutor. She thought working with Project Innocence would help her become a more well-rounded prosecutor. But after just a month with the group, Montle decided to switch to the defense side of the courtroom for her career.

"I don't think everything is black and white," she says. "I think if you're a state's attorney, you have to think in black and white. A lot of time, (prosecutorial work) is about numbers of convictions."

After graduating from Tulane in 2003, she took a job as a public defender in Florida, then worked two years in family law there. Along the way, she married John McCarroll, a restaurant manager she had met in Louisiana.

This year, she spotted an opening on the legal staff of Project Innocence of Florida.

"It screamed to me," she says with a chuckle.

She applied and took the job, even though it meant taking a pay cut. For her first case, she was assigned with two other attorneys to the appeal of Dillon, who had spent the past 27 years in prison on a murder rap. That term equaled the longest span for any defendant exonerated by the Innocence Project.

Dillon was implicated in the 1981 slaying of James Dvorak, who had been bludgeoned in a wooded area of Canova Beach, in Brevard County. Police fingered him after spotting him hanging round the beach days later. Dillon, who had read about the killing in the papers, showed enough knowledge about the murder to prompt an arrest.

But the prosecution witnesses were iffy. One was a former girlfriend of Dillon who had pegged him as guilty, but she recanted her statement after revealing that the case's lead detective had a sexual liaison with her during the investigation. Another was a dog tracker who was later revealed to be a fraud by experts and national media. A third was a jail snitch who fingered Dillon in exchange for the dismissal of a rape charge. And a fourth, an alleged eyewitness who claimed to have spotted Dillon near the crime scene, was half blind and unsure of himself.

Still, Dillon - whose prior criminal history consisted only of a DUI conviction - found himself locked up for life for the killing. At first flabbergasted and furious, he later found peace.

"I made a decision with God that I was going to drop all the hate and ill will," Dillon says. "I told myself, 'I can't live with myself like this, because it's eating me alive.' "

So, though existing amid an atmosphere of endless rapes, murders and assaults behind bars, Dillon prayed for protection and help. The latter he found after contacting Project Innocence.

"God put those people in my life," he says. "He put that team together."

The key member was Montle, who talked with Dillon at least once a week.

"He has taught me so much," she says. "He is an amazing man.

"There is a man who has lost 27 years of his life. But every time we talked, he had a good attitude. When I would have a bad morning in traffic and I'd get mad, I'd think of him. I'd have nothing to complain about."

For the appeal, Montle and her colleagues targeted the key piece of prosecution evidence, a yellow T-shirt stained with the victim's blood - and allegedly worn by Dillon. But, via Project Innocence, the T-shirt recently underwent DNA analysis unavailable back in 1981.

Results showed that sweat on the collar and armpits had not come from Dillon. He had not been wearing the shirt. An appeals court threw out the decision and ordered a new trial.

Days ago, thanks to the $2,500 bond from Project Innocence, Dillon walked out of jail.

"It was awesome," he says. "It was something that made my chest swell."

He is staying with relatives in Brevard County. Authorities have vowed to retry the case. But Montle, pointing at the dubious reliability of the witnesses, foresees nothing but an acquittal.

Meanwhile, she and her group are urging the governor to investigate Brevard County authorities for potential misconduct in years past, not just in the Dillon case but also in many others.

Meanwhile, Montle plans to next visit her parents and grandparents in Peoria at Christmas. She will spend Thanksgiving in Florida with her husband. Thursday, she can expect a phone call from Dillon, who thinks she will make a deep impression with Project Innocence.

"She is extremely, extremely special," Dillon says. "She's going to help some people."